Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I join my colleagues in congratulating Mr. McDonagh on his achievements and on the fact that he will hang on to the cultural part of him that will say, "I am a Traveller and also other things." The journey I made through life was often quite lonely because a person can end up living in limbo between two worlds. On moving so far, Mr. McDonagh may ask all of a sudden whether he is still part of the Traveller community or still part of the new community in the university he is going to. Sometimes it can be really difficult to get one's head around that and find where one fits in. All one can do is try to maintain one's identity and hold it. We need to get to a point where individuals like Mr. McDonagh are not the exception but the rule. Sometimes when someone from a minority group is so successful, an establishment will laud him or her and ask why everyone cannot do the same. It sometimes happened me because I left school so young and had children so young. My advice to Mr. McDonagh, a young man who seems extremely intelligent and confident, is to demand that establishments do not do that. By doing so, they place full responsibility on the individual to overcome his or her own poverty and barriers. The issue is regarded as associated with an individual rather than one that might affect a community. My advice to Mr. McDonagh, in all his successes and when he becomes an amazing garda, is that he should remind people that this matter will not be addressed until he is not regarded as an exception and until he is not a story, when Travellers have achieved true equality and when he can sit at a staff meeting in a Garda station and see himself reflected in the people who work around him. I offer this advice because it is based on something that I, being who I feel I am and being where I am from, had to struggle with when entering politics. I hope he can take this small piece of advice with him on his journey, which sounds like it will be tremendous.